


Five Times Brunnhilde Left (and One Time She Returned)

by misura



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Asgard (Marvel), Gen, Hopeful Ending, Lesbian Brunnhilde | Valkyrie (Marvel), Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Pre-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 10:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15683721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: The last ride of the Valkyrie, and what came after.





	Five Times Brunnhilde Left (and One Time She Returned)

.01

The mead flowed freely, as it ever did when there was a victory to celebrate - and who in all Nine Realms might stand against the might of Asgard? Victories had become rare only for lack of enemies, of fools willing to take up arms rather than submit when Odin came calling.

What value courage, when cowardice was the coin that would buy one life and prosperity?

Soon enough, some muttered, the warband would be disbanded, the once proud Valkyrie reduced to palace guards and tax collectors, their swords grown rusty with disuse.

 _And what will I do then?_ She could not imagine finding joy in peace. That she found so now was only because peace was a luxury, a respite. Something different.

"Sister," a voice said, from the right of her. (She recognized it, of course; would recognize it even from half a battlefield away.) "Why such dark looks on a night as bright as this?"

 _Not half as bright as your eyes,_ she thought. Had they been alone, she might have said it out loud and won a laugh. As it was, she shrugged, feigning ignorance, indifference.

"Let me lift your spirits?" A question that was no question; she nodded.

(The last time they had feasted together, she and all her sisters, but she had not known it at the time and so she had not looked back, and this was what she later remembered.)

 

.02

A grim departure on a cold morning.

 _'Bring me my daughter Hela, who has sinned against me,'_ Odin Allfather had commanded, and what was there for any of them to do but obey? _'Alive, if you can, but dead will do.'_

Small mercies: he would not be expecting the impossible. _Merely the very difficult._

People said of Hela that she was cruel, and bloodthirsty, and wanton. Alone, she might lay waste to armies, and had done so, for the glory of Asgard and Odin, _and to do battle with such a one, we now ride._

Her sisters surrounded her, bright and brave. A warband, as feared as Hela, in their own way; alone, none of them might hope to stand against a goddess, but together, surely, they would triumph.

_At what price, though?_

(They might have warned Hela of her father's plan; they might have withdrawn from the conflict entirely; they might have done any number of things, but no one spoke, and so she kept quiet also, riding out with the rest of them, to their doom. The bravest and brightest, and she, the coward, the failure.)

 

.03

The dead were all around her, and the dying. There was no mercy in Hela; she had not bothered finishing all her kills, or making sure they were clean.

Perhaps, also, she had simply grown weary of the bloodshed. _Or bored._ There had been no challenge to the thing. They had come upon her, Asgard's finest, to bring to heel Asgard's shame, and they had been defeated like ants before a giant, or the raging sea, crashed upon an uncaring shore - except that an ant might escape a giant, if it was clever, and if the sea raged long enough, the shore would give way and crumble, bit by bit, as Hela had not.

Hela had gone now, and she was alone. The least of them, at the end; the last one to raise her sword so that others had gone to their death before her. The one others had died to protect, not knowing that she was unworthy, that she would have preferred making the sacrifice herself, rather than to survive.

_Never again will the halls of Asgard be filled with your bright laughter._

She did not know where to go, or what there remained to her that was worth doing, save, perhaps, to spit in Odin's face for what he had done, what he had allowed himself to be complicit to, in spite of knowing full well the strength of his daughter, his firstborn child and one-time heir.

(In this, as in all things, she failed. Surely the least of her offenses, though: add it to the list and move on. As all who reach Sakaar know, there is no limit to how far one can fall, only the comfort of knowing that, sooner or later, one will be found, and loved, and sacrificed in the name of entertainment.)

 

.04

People avoided meeting her eyes, as if her dishonor were a disease, a contamination.

Odin, from his throne, spoke of victory, of a time of peace and prosperity, come at last now that all of the Nine Realms had lost the lust to war against Asgard's superiority.

He spoke with regret of Hela, his daughter, whom he had been forced to bar from Asgard and all of Asgard's worlds forevermore - _'A tragedy, really, but she left me no choice, no choice at all,'_ and she stood there listening, thinking, _Liar_.

No chance of vengeance now, of visiting upon Hela what Hela had visited upon her, never mind that such had never been possible, for who had ever lived that Hela had loved?

Her clothes still smelled of the ashes of all her sisters' pyres. She had loved them, known them, fought with them, argued with them, slept with them.

Other, lesser warriors lay buried in Asgard's cellars. A crypt, to hold the honored dead until they might be bade to rise again and take up arms one final time, for Asgard and Odin. Not so, the Valkyrie. What few mounts remained, she had set free; what swords and cloaks and uniforms remained, she had burnt or buried.

 _For the sake of your pride, you have killed us,_ she thought. _For the sake of a daughter turned against you, in whom once you took pride._

 _Never again will the Valkyrie ride for you._ It stung, that he would not care, that this was a vengeance taken only in her imagination.

No one moved to stop her as she walked out.

 

.05

"An ill thing," said Heimdall.

She shrugged. The pain of her loss had numbed everything else by now, even the anger.

Heimdall offered nothing more. People said of him that his wisdom was only rivaled by Odin's, and that it grew as he kept watch, seeing all that occurred in all the Nine Realms.

"Whereto?" he asked.

In truth, it mattered not. She had no intention of arrival, merely of departure. There was a realm, a nothingness outside of Bifrost one might reach during those few minutes of travel from one point to another. An ending, for soul and body both. There would be no need for anyone to light a pyre for her, to prevent Odin from raising her to the final battle.

Her soul would be lost as well, but what of it? She had never found a use for it anyway.

"Vanaheim," she said, hoping he would believe her. (There were, still, places and things to which even Heimdall was blind.) "Visiting a friend," she added, though he had not asked.

"Travel safely, then," said Heimdall, as he turned the sword - more of a curse than a well-wishing, though he could not know it.

(Unloved and unwanted, she reached Sakaar, wondering if, had she hated herself a little less, she might not have been granted the ending she had desired.)

 

.01 

"It is not cowardice I would ask of you," said Thor. "It is courage."

 _Last time someone trusted me with their lives, things did not end well._ And this time, there can be no sharing, no feeling of merely being one of the many.

This son of Odin would have her guard Asgard itself. _For Asgard is not a place, but a people._

_Not much of one, mind._

"What about your brother?" No son of Odin's he, for all that Odin had claimed him as such, once.

Thor shrugged. "He tells me that he has a plan."

"Sounds like him. Worried?" Too long, since she'd had a drink, a taste of forgetfulness. Not that her memories ever truly left her, but the effort provided a certain satisfaction.

"For Loki? Never," said Thor. "So will you do it? Will you keep them safe, my people, and yours?"

 _If not me, then who?_ No one. _But hey, no pressure._ She nodded. "For Asgard."

Thor beamed. With luck, she would never see his father in him. "For Asgard."


End file.
